


Beginning and End

by jen_misbehaving



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Raised You From Perdition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:36:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jen_misbehaving/pseuds/jen_misbehaving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No, now there were even more echoes, more living sentences screaming inside him. But sometimes they just gently nudged, like Dean’s croaked and broken “Thank you” before his soul was placed back in his body, although whether it was for himself or for the other souls Dean would no longer torture, Cas never knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beginning and End

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic, so hopefully it doesn't suck too much. Also, there's probably a lot of fics that have a similar premise, so even if I don't get full points for originality, I still enjoyed writing it.

Truth be told, Castiel had requested that he be the one to raise Dean’s soul from hell. The reason for this was rather complicated, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he understood all of it himself, which is why he felt an enormous sense of relief that no one had ever asked him why. The angels simply had no curiosity and Dean could never get past his own sense of unworthiness to wonder about it. Sometimes when Cas and Dean have a particularly nasty argument, Cas considers trying to explain. In the end, he always holds back. 

Cas was sure he couldn’t properly explain it, and even if he could, Dean very likely wouldn’t understand. It weighed on him painfully, the knowledge that he couldn’t express any of this to Dean. Cas knew where the story began and he knew where the story ended, but the middle was a bit … hazy. 

Dean had first come to Cas’s attention on a night he was running prayer interference. Honestly, Cas didn’t much like the task, most prayers being something he could do nothing about, as they involved making someone else do something. That’s when he heard Dean’s voice for the first time. 

“I don’t know if anybody up there can hear me, hell, I don’t even know if anybody’s even up there. But if someone is, please … Please don’t let Sammy leave. I know this is selfish, and I know he’s always wanted to go to college, but he’s all I got. Sammy is all I got, and I can’t lose him.” Dean’s voice failed him then, the tightness in his throat and chest cutting off any more words. 

There it was, the desperate prayer of man with no faith. It was the utter despair that especially caught Cas’s attention. The complete hopelessness. And Castiel couldn’t help. It was, after all, Sam’s choice to leave for Stanford. So Cas did the only thing he could do, he waited until Dean had fallen asleep and watched over him while he slept, soothing away the nightmares with the gentle touch of his fingers to Dean’s forehead. 

Cas’s initial sensation was one of curiosity. How John Winchester could sleep so soundly while one son was on the verge of emotional collapse and the other had just walked out of his life bothered Cas some, but mostly it was the echo of Dean’s prayer reverberating through his whole being. It was unexpected. New. Painful. Sometimes even now, all these years removed, Cas still felt that prayer bounce around inside him, screaming inside him. 

He made a special point of keeping a channel to Dean open, just in case, but he never heard from him again, not until after Dean came back from hell. 

The echo of Dean’s voice was always a persistent buzz all through his grace, but it became unbearable in the four months Dean was trapped in hell, so it was with monumental relief that Cas undertook Dean’s rescue. Maybe then this terrible and lovely echo would finally cease. 

Several of his beloved brothers and sisters were lost in the fight to get to Dean. As much as that might grieve him, Cas could never really bring himself to regret it. Something, some _feeling,_ told him that Dean Winchester was more than worth it. When he finally reached Dean’s soul, he hadn’t been truly prepared for that encounter. He cared for this broken soul as best as he could, but each soul was a miraculous and unique piece of art. Cas felt clumsy trying to shape all the parts together again. 

As the pieces struggled to come back together, Cas felt every doubt, every hope, every disappointment. He knew everything about this man, his fears, his self-loathing, and something else. Love. Pure searing love for his brother, his parents, someone named Bobby. Cas could never satisfactorily answer if this was the first time the crack appeared inside him or if it just forced something open that had previously remained shut. It didn’t really matter, because that hole was suddenly filling up with something akin to reverence; holy, profound, and altogether different than anything he could have imagined. That, he supposed, was all the prompting he needed to deposit a healthy dollop of his grace into Dean’s soul. 

Cas had never told anyone he had done it. He was certain Dean would be upset by the information and equally certain that heaven would find a singularly creative way to punish him for it. Even after all that, the echo of Dean’s first prayer to him didn’t fade. No, now there were even more echoes, more living sentences screaming inside him. But sometimes they just gently nudged, like Dean’s croaked and broken “Thank you” before his soul was placed back in his body, although whether it was for himself or for the other souls Dean would no longer torture, Cas never knew. And always insistent, gnawing at his core was “Dean Winchester is worth it.” 

That was Cas’s beginning, his real beginning. As for the middle of this story, well, that was still ongoing. All the fights, pain, exhausting days and nights, all of it, could be forgotten by a sudden smile reaching up into those piercing green eyes. True enough, the painful days far outnumbered the good, but Cas would still rather be here than anywhere. The best place in all heaven and Earth was right beside Dean. Even when he couldn’t be near him, even with heaven crashing down around his ears and hell crawling up to grab his ankles, Cas could keep on working all because he knew Dean Winchester was alive. He knew, too, what the ending of his story would always be. Dean. 


End file.
